The New Penguin Russian Course: A Complete Course for Beginners

I have used one of these for 15 years. And I give one away to every young person I know who is studying RU... have probably given away at least 10 by now. The strong suit of the book is its organization... it is very easy to find any topic you are looking for in the book. The covers are falling off my copy from use, so guess I need to buy a new copy !

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I've been learning Russian independently for about a year now, and I bought this book along with a college textbook being used at a local university. Amazingly, even though this book is far less expensive, I consider it superior to that textbook as well as other Russian textbooks I've seen.This book is great for the self-learner because it has many exercises and examples throughout, and everything is explained in a logical manner. Also, unlike most college textbooks, all of the solutions are in the back, so you can check and correct your answers (presumably you are buying this book to learn Russian and not to pass the class, so I'm sure there's little motivation to simply copy the answers to complete an assignment). The exercises directly relate to the associated lesson, and you'll be amazed at how much you'll learn after completing a lesson, as you'll be able to understand passages that were once unreadable to you.Be warned that the book is deceptively thin. You might look at the book, which is smaller than most textbooks, and figure that it's light on information. Trust me, it's not. Although on the outside it looks like a beach-read paperback novel that you'll be able to get through in a day or even a week, each page is packed with information, and you'll have to spend a lot of time on many lessons before these concepts sink in. Russian of course is a difficult language for a native English speaker, so don't expect to fly through this book.You shouldn't use this as your only resource if you are learning Russian. The biggest downside to this book is that it won't help your listening or your speaking (understandably, since it has no audio). You'll need to find another resource to work on these areas. Do not neglect this! I made the mistake of ignoring listening and speaking for the first few months, and I ran into an odd situation with a native speaker where I was able to read and write a few simply things in Russian but found it almost impossible to understand a single word or pronounce anything correctly (very embarrassing). In addition, you'll need to do a fair amount of studying and memorizing outside of the lessons. I found that I would learn words and grammar rules but then "forget" them after a few days or a few weeks. A lot of the grammar and declensions simply have to be drilled and memorized by brute force. Hey, nobody said Russian was easy.In short, this is an absolutely fantastic resource for a beginner who wants to learn to read and write in Russian. It is well worth the price. Get it, and you will not be disappointed.Udachi Vam!

I started Russian study from scratch at my local community college. Russian is tough, period. Our teacher (a Russian) wanted us to use this book. I found the progressive instruction well laid out and at several points you were allowed to "catch your breath." No, the book does NOT give complete detailed instruction of each case system with all the inflections, just the basics, and yes, complex case levels are somewhat split up , more complicated material later in the book.Russian has strict "comma rules" and of all of my five texts, this is the ONLY one that carefully describes these important rules, in ch. 26. Not even the Schaum grammar, which is massive, addresses comma rules.But here is a goody that is surprisingly overlooked: The Table of Contents and Index are the most thorough I have seen in this type of text, and the reader is referred to specific pages and/ or section of chapter, not just to some vague reference that leaves you thrashing through dozens of pages. There is an excellent Eng/RU dictionary, enough text and conversation material to be helpful, and nice grammatical tables although there are never enough of these.Changes since Russian political restructure can make bits of dialogue out of date but this is not an issue with me.I also use PIMSLEUR'S excellent CD system , and have used Complete Russian by West, and Colloquial Russian I and II, by Le Fleming and Kay; each has merits, but I keep using this Penguin book by Brown for reference and help - it is physically falling apart now!Finally, Excellent practical, friendly supplementary books are 501 VERBS, 5000 RUSSIAN WORDS, and Schaum's RUSSIAN GRAMMAR ( The latter book is scary but good reference, loaded with exercises) Finally, the RUSSIAN 750 VERBS by Zauber is superb, sort of a written Pimsleur, with about 3,000 sentences, easy to use, in English alpha. order, and with wonderful tables of prefixes and other goodies. All these books cheap.